Thanks to Resexcellence, you can now add more items to your 'Applications' and 'Documents' areas of the 'Recent Items' menu. This article explains how do do so, but makes it a bit more complicated than it need be.

The way I did it ... navigate to:

/Users/username/Library/Preferences

through the Terminal. Then type: pico com.apple.recentitems.plist

Now just add more apps and docs between the 'string' tags in the 'apps' and 'docs' sections until you think you have enough (I have 12). You'll need the full path to the apps, as well as their full name (most end in '.app'), in order for this to work. Do not repeat any apps or docs, save the .plist and logout/login and you'll have your extended 'Recent Items' list! Now as you add more items, the canned ones you used to lengthen the list will be replaced with the apps you're opening, but you'll always have more than five!